


i hope the kids remember you

by astersandstuffs



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Genophage, Mass Effect Spoilers, Missing Scene, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 00:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astersandstuffs/pseuds/astersandstuffs
Summary: In the Shroud's facility, Eve asked him to sing again.





	i hope the kids remember you

In the Shroud's facility, Eve asked him to sing again.

Mordin did, and this time she didn't even have to twist his arm that much, because he was too occupied with synthesizing the genophage cure and Eve was dying.

“ _Oh, better to die to a thresher maw,_  
_with shotgun-blasting-roaring-raw,_  
_than to play ambassadorial games,_  
_with the blood of Shiagur in her veins_ …”

He preferred to work between vocalizing his some-say-morbid thoughts or alongside other brilliant minds or while singing absently, anyway. (So absently, in fact, that he once spooked Commander Shepard out of his labs with a poem advising safe maneuvers in human-turian horizontal refreshment.) (And Eve was a brilliant mind.) If he'd had to shoot the mercenaries banging on his door and threatening his patients back on Omega and hang their bodies in front of his makeshift clinic to get his peace, well. Simple enough.

“ _Off to fight since the turians can't,_  
_with diplomats instead of a krantt._  
_But she'll be true to Tuchanka's dreams,_  
_and live and die a krogan queen_ …”

That wasn't an option now. There was a Reaper just past the front door with its deafening mechanical bellow and its claws taking stabs at his squadmates and ripping out the ground; there was the mother of all thresher maws, slithering below and shaking the planet enough that it might as well be tearing it apart from the inside out; there were Shepard and Urdnot Wrex yelling at each other over the comms. he didn't turn off, noisy as they were with the guns and the  _click-click-whoosh_ of rapidly reloading thermal clips and Shepard's rampant biotic explosions. The ex-STG in him almost wished he was out in the action with them. Perhaps then he wouldn't be responsible for the fate of an entire species. Not again.

“ _For… she is the krogan queen!_  
_Hurrah, hurrah for the krogan queen!_ ”

The planet Tuchanka shuddered violently and he sang louder toward the end of the chorus and over Eve's muffled coughing. (Or was it a chuckle? Hmm. With krogan, one might never know.) Wrex hollered in manic laughter. Shepard let out a thread of very descriptive curses that Mordin would like to stitch to his more anthropological lyrics one day.

“ _And it is, it is a glorious thing to be the krogan queen!_ ”

Ashes drizzled from the ceiling by the next quake. Mordin snatched the medicine he'd finally perfected with the aid of Maelon's data, eyes kept on the screens and his omni-tool all the while, and threw it to Eve. It would be too late for any other species but Eve was a krogan—a krogan female, a shaman for her people, a leader and warrior all the same. She caught it with ease and drank it with trust no salarians should ever deserve.

“Say, doctor,” Eve said afterward, sounding stronger already. She sounded like she'd have a robust singing voice, krogan-deep and grisly and weathered, tempered by wisdom beyond her years and peers. “You're making the cure for all krogan. I am no scientist, but I can see that it's almost finished. You didn't need to tend to me at once; you could've given the data to doctor Chakwas in the Normandy. Why?”

“Hmph. Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.” Mordin looked over Eve's vitals. Stabilizing, stabilizing. Good, good. “Honest calculation: Wrex—good clan leader. Smart. Will lead krogan well. Much less chance of another Krogan Rebellion.  _Might_ be able to achieve it without you, yes. But you keep him in check. Make all of krogan stronger. Morally, culturally, politically. Every other lily pad in the pond.”

Static. Mordin amplified the comms.'s volume so Eve could listen in like before, her condition improving enough that psychological distress was unlikely to significantly worsen it. It'd been her idea to pit the Reaper against Kalros the thresher maw, after all. Because even monsters had homes they'd defend to the death. He would know.

 _“SHEPARD!”_ shouted Wrex over the chaos. _“WHAT’S TAKING YOUR ASS SO LONG? THOSE MAW HAMMERS AREN'T GONNA HIT THEMSELVES!”_

 _“THERE'S A FUCKING_ REAPER _IN MY WAY, WREX!”_

Eve gave up a half-amused snort and Mordin felt the corner of his mouth twitch slightly upward. She sat her bulky form up straighter, leaned back against the decrepit wall and closed her desert-gold eyes—the color of Tuchanka's desert—her breathing still a tad too controlled in the rising dust. “Will you sing again, doctor?” she asked, and Mordin made a noise but started on the song once more—“No. Not about Shiagur. Right now, I have more than enough hope, thanks to you and the Commander. Sing something about yourself. Heh, maybe one of those patter songs you endorse so much.”

Typing away on the computer console, tapping his three fingers on the desktop once there was nothing left he could do aside from waiting for the result, Mordin hummed some fast, probable beats.

“ _I am the very model of a scientist salarian._  
_I've studied species turian, asari, and batarian._ ”

He leaped back from the console and pivoted around. He swept his arms out to the sides and tilted his head up. He let his friends hear him on the other side of the comms., and maybe speculated that Shepard shared a secret smile with him.

“ _I'm quite good at genetics (as a subset of biology),_  
_because I am an expert (which I know is a tautology)._ ”

Wrex made some sort of confused noise and Shepard mustered a choked-up laugh at the krogan battlemaster. The turian Garrus Vakarian sighed, and the ever-shrewd asari Shadow Broker was quiet.

Mordin couldn't determine Eve's expression behind her headdress, and krogan didn’t smile as much as show off their teeth, but he thought there might be more crinkles and wrinkles around her eyes than usual.

“ _My xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian._  
_I am the very model of a scientist salarian!_ ”

 

 

 

Later, when the Reaper and Kalros clashed with the force of a localized meteor strike, when the cure was done and all that was left was to disperse it from the top of the Shroud and Mordin was calling transport back to safety for Eve, Eve told him, “My name is Urdnot Bakara.”

Urdnot Bakara told him, “Just as Shepard is a sister to Wrex, you are a brother to me, Mordin Solus.”

Bakara told him, “I would like to teach my children your songs one day. Whatever may happen, know that the children of krogan will remember you—

“—and that from now on, among my people, _Mordin Solus_ will mean hope.”

 

 

 

“I’ll miss you,” said Shepard, all blood- and dirt- and dust-streaked but blinking back something else entirely. “I'm sorry,” said the twice-running savior of the galaxy.

“I'm not. Had to be me,” Mordin said, and smiled. “Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

 

 

 

Up the elevator (and first breathe in the sealed air; there'd be too much smoke ahead). Out into the Shroud's control center (and not into any explosions just yet). Sidestep the fire and the rubble and the broken glass.

 

 

 

Type away, tap away. Turn off the comms.

 

 

 

“Hmm, hmm, hmm. I've studied species turian, asari, and batarian...

 

 

 

“My xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian...

 

 

 

“I am the very model of—

 

 

 


End file.
